You don’t have to hug trees to appreciate them

In my opinion, we should all be tree-huggers. Members of the Save our Shawnee Forest organization were called “tree huggers” at the recent Rarden Whitetail Deer Festival in Scioto County, where we had a Keep Shawnee Wild booth promoting wild forest habitat for bobcats. We take that as a compliment. Not all of us actually hug trees, but we do value and appreciate them and want to preserve and protect them in our state forest, which we all own. We got 280 petition signatures and heard some great bobcat stories.

A tree isn’t just a tree, it’s a community. Trees are the keystone species of a forest but there is so much more in addition to trees.

Shawnee State Forest, the largest relatively undisturbed state forest in Ohio with 64,000 acres, likely has more than 50,000 species in addition to some 70 species of trees.

In my opinion, we should all look at trees for what they really are and be grateful for them, whether or not we hug them.